The Alpine Betrayal Read Online Free Page A

asked for the double cheeseburger, fries, and coffee. I opted for a hamburger dip au jus,a small salad, and a Pepsi. Vida requested her tea. The waitress started to wheel away, but Vida called her back:
    “There’s a minimum per table setting, right?”
    Jessie Lott shrugged. “Really, that’s just when nobody else orders more than—”
    “In that case,” Vida interrupted, “I’ll have the chicken basket with fries, tartar sauce on the side, and a small green salad with Roquefort.” She threw Jessie a challenging look and deep-sixed the menu. “Well,” Vida said, eyeing her niece and Cody, “when’s the wedding? I heard you ordered the invitations last week.”
    “October nineteenth,” replied Marje in her brisk voice. She didn’t look at all like her aunt, but some of their mannerisms were similar. Both were no-nonsense women, devoid of sentiment, but not without compassion. “We’re going to Acapulco for our honeymoon.” She turned her bright blue eyes on Cody, as if daring him to differ. “We’ll love it.”
    Cody, who had been toying with the salt and pepper shakers, gazed ironically at his beloved. “Yeah, sure we will, Marje. Especially the part where we both get the Aztec two-step.”
    “Don’t believe everything you hear,” Marje retorted. “You just don’t drink water out of the tap, that’s all. Or eat in strange places. Good Lord, Cody, don’t be such a wimp!”
    Cody drew back in the booth. He was sharp-featured, with straw-colored hair, restless gray eyes, and a sulky cast to his long mouth. Though he was narrow of shoulder, his bare upper arms were muscular, and I supposed that younger women would find him attractive, especially with that petulant air. He struck me as spoiled, but I hoped—for Marje’s sake—that I was wrong. Certainly she seemed to be getting her way about the honeymoon.
    “You just wanted to go fishing in Montana or Wyoming or some godforsaken place,” Marje was saying. “As if you don’t hotfoot it out to the river every chance you get around here.”
    “Fishing stinks in this state,” declared Cody. “There isn’t a river in Washington that isn’t fished out. I haven’t caught a trout bigger than eight inches since I was sixteen. And steelheading is a joke. You’re lucky if you get one of those babies every season.”
    Cody wasn’t exaggerating, but I kept quiet, not wanting to take sides. But Cody wasn’t finished with his griping: “Everything stinks around here these days,” he proclaimed, flexing his biceps for emphasis. “Take all these wimpy environmentalists trying to wipe out the logging business. How does a guy like me live in this state? I don’t know how to do anything but work in the woods. Do they want me sitting on a street corner with a tin cup and a sign that says WILL WORK FOR FOOD ? Work at
what?
It pisses me off.”
    It was pissing off an increasing number of people in the forest products industry, though I noticed that Cody seemed to take the environmentalists’ concerns very personally. I supposed I couldn’t blame him, but I had an urge to point out that there were two sides to the story, and that while I sympathized with him, he was not alone in his outrage. Vida, however, intervened.
    “Just be glad you can afford a honeymoon at all,” she admonished them. “And the time. How long will you be gone?”
    “A week,” replied Marje. “That’s all I can take off at once from Doc Dewey’s office. It’s too hard to get anybody to fill in for me in this town. In fact, he’d rather I went next week because he’s going to be gone.” She pulled a face at her aunt. “Frankly, I don’t think he wants me to go at all. Doc’s been real cranky lately.”
    “We ought to elope,” said Cody, his ruffled feathers apparently smoothed. “With the logging operation shut down and that bunch of dorks making a movie up there on Baldy, this would be a good time for me to take off.” He jostled Marje’s arm. “What do you